In recent years, more and more consumers desire more high-fashion clothes, bags, and shoes and, in order to meet such consumers' desires, a knitted fabric to allow clothes or the like to have an excellent, beautiful appearance or liveness has been actively developed. Typically, such a knitted fabric is provided with a color effect which is produced by a method such as using a plurality of yarns having different colors or made of different materials, combining structures, or using a mesh design or the like, and clothes or the like using such a knitted fabric exhibit an excellent, beautiful appearance or liveness caused by the color effect provided on the knitted fabric.
As for such a knitted fabric provided with a color effect, for example, a knitted fabric provided with a color effect called “iridescence” (Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-41465) and a knitted or woven fabric provided with a color effect which is produced by decorating the surface of the fabric with an uneven pattern (Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2013-124419) have been proposed.
The conventional knitted fabric disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2003-41465 is produced by knitting a fabric with yarns which can be dyed in different colors by dyeing alternately using different dying methods or different dyes, and then dying the knitted fabric by alternately using the different dying methods or different dyes so that the portions dyed by the different methods appear on the surface of the knitted fabric with an almost equal area. Because of having the portions dyed by the different methods with an equal area, the knitted fabric exhibits an iridescent color effect.
The conventional knitted or woven fabric disclosed in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2013-124419 is a composite fabric composed of an upper fabric and a lower fabric, and has a single-layer structure portion and a double-layer hollow structure portion formed alternately thereon, the upper fabric and the lower fabric being combined together at the single-layer structure portion, and the upper fabric and the lower fabric being separated from each other at the double-layer hollow structure portion. The double-layer hollow structure portion in the lower fabric uses a heat-shrinkable fiber yarn, and, in producing the knitted or woven fabric, the double-layer hollow structure portion in the lower fabric is shrunk by thermal processing and thereby the double-layer hollow structure portion in the upper fabric is raised to form a ridge, whereby the surface of the knitted or woven fabric is decorated with an uneven pattern. In this knitted or woven fabric, yarns of different colors are arranged in right and left surfaces that constitute the ridge of the upper fabric so that the observer can visually recognize different colors between when looking at the knitted or woven fabric from one surface side and when looking at the knitted or woven fabric from the other surface side, which exhibits a color effect.
As described above, both of the above-described conventional arts provide a knitted fabric with a color effect. Therefore, clothes or the like using such a knitted fabric can exhibit an extraordinary, beautiful appearance or liveness because the knitted fabric looks different when the position of the observer relative to the knitted fabric is changed by a motion of the wearer.